Liar, Lover Mirror, Tell Me What's the Difference?
by SalemAnderson
Summary: Why did Roxanne react the way she did in the rain when Megamind's cover was blown? She liked Megamind more than she admitted openly, but why did she get so mad at him and not let him explain? Perhaps it hit a little too close to home and reopened some old wounds. Read and review, please; I love reviews!


**a/n: So this hit me at work today and I had to write it. I started wondering if there was a reason Roxanne reacted the way she did when she found out about Megs' lie. Perhaps there was a past event that colored her reaction. Anyway, this is the result. It's a piece that fits with the canon, but I left out the parts we all know happened since we have all seen the movie. Let me know what you think!**

Summary: Why did Roxanne react the way she did in the rain when Megamind's cover was blown? She liked Megamind more than she admitted openly, but why did she get so mad at him and not let him explain? Perhaps it hit a little too close to home and reopened some old wounds.

Disclaimer: I wish I owned Megamind, but he belongs to Roxanne; I mean Dreamworks. My husband keeps threatening to dye his skin blue and have his head enlarged so I'll pay attention to him. What? I'm not that bad! LOL!

Liar, Lover; Mirror, Tell Me What's the Difference?

Roxanne Ritchi had never had an active love life. As a teenager, she had never had a boyfriend, as she was always more interested in school and doing what she needed to in order to get good grades. Her father could not afford to send her to college so she always knew she would have to get a scholarship if she wanted to go. Although lonely at times during her high school years, she succeeded in securing a full ride to Metro City University.

After high school, she went straight to college, starting in the summer term so as not to waste any time with frivolous vacationing. She had priorities and nothing was going to stop her from getting the degree in journalism she wanted. She was in her junior year of college when she met him. She saw him out of the corner of her eye as she was looking for a book on the Uniform Commercial Code to supplement the course book in her studying for the upcoming test on the subject. He had dark wavy hair framing a clean-shaven tanned face with bold blue eyes and a gorgeous smile, broad shoulders, and a tall muscularly toned body hidden only slightly by the black v-neck sweater and blue jeans he was wearing. She was infatuated with him almost from first sight.

Time seemed to stand still as he approached her. She smiled at him. "Hi," she said brightly.

"Hey." His voice was like a crooner singing when he spoke. He smiled back and stared into her eyes for a moment before continuing, "Do you work here?"

"No, I am just studying for a test."

"Oh." He paused for a moment, then said, "Let me guess. Business law – the UCC, right?" She looked up at him with amazement on her face. How did he know what she was studying? She hadn't even found the book she'd been looking for yet!

"Yeah, how did you know?" she asked, her curiosity getting the best of her. He smiled again and reached for a book on a shelf she couldn't see. Pulling down a large volume, he handed it to her. It was the book on the Code she'd been trying to find.

"I have the same test tomorrow, too," he said with a laugh. She took the book and turned around to head back to the table she was using to study. He followed behind her. She settled herself at the table and he pulled up a chair across from her. "So, what do you think of Professor Shapiro?"

"He seems very smart, although you can tell he's an attorney because he talks like one," she admitted.

"He's definitely one for the ten-dollar words," he laughed. She laughed with him. Professor Shapiro certainly did like to use big words when he lectured. It made it hard to tell what he was actually talking about sometimes unless she brought a dictionary to class. "So, since we have the same test coming up, do you want to study together?"

"Sure," she said and turned her attention back to the book.

"I'm Greg, by the way. Greg Vasco."

She met his eyes again and laughed nervously. "Roxanne Ritchi. Nice to meet you."

"You have a beautiful name." He leaned forward so he was closer to her when he asked, "So, Roxanne, what's your major?" Her name rolled off his tongue in the most pleasing way.

She was entranced again. "Oh, uh, um. J-Journalism," she said as she tucked a loose strand of her hair behind her ear. "What's yours?"

"Pre-law. I didn't think there were any law courses as requirements in the Journalism track."

"It's not; I took it as an elective. I just want to be prepared for anything. You never know what you might run into." Sometimes she felt like she was in over her head, but she wanted the course under her belt for the experience. Roxanne wanted to be able to understand any story she was covering, so she had planned to take a wide range of elective courses. The Business Law class had seemed like a good idea at the time, and she was learning a lot, but it was still a bit overwhelming.

"Dedicated. I like that," he muttered as he dropped his attention to the book in front of him. Star struck as she was, she had to make herself focus on the subject because she needed to pass. In the end, Roxanne and Greg studied into the night and she took the test the next morning, passing it with flying colors. She didn't see Greg in class, but assumed he simply had the class at a different hour than she did. He found her later that day at the campus food court and they resumed the easy friendship they had begun the previous night.

Shortly thereafter, the two started dating and Roxanne, naïve as she was in the matters of the heart, found herself falling in love with him quickly. He was so charming and knew just how to treat her. For months, they spent all of their free time together in the library studying, going out on dates, talking and just generally being close. A few times a week they would eat out for dinner or go see a movie together, too, taking turns picking the flick of the week. Roxanne thought she had found her soul mate and was secretly glad she had not wasted time with the boys in high school as her friends had wanted her to, because it wouldn't have mattered once her Greg came into the picture. He was the perfect man.

Little things that were weird about him, she either didn't notice or else completely ignored. Greg never seemed to need additional time to study for his classes aside from their first meeting. If they were "studying," it was always her subjects. He always said that he had time to study in between his classes when she was busy, and it was better to get his homework done while the subject matter was fresh in his mind. He also never wanted to meet her friends or spend time with anyone but Roxanne, but she figured he was just shy and dismissed it as one of his quirks. When they did study together, they spent most of the time flirting and kissing.

He was always around her, and she liked it that way, but she wasn't ready to take the relationship to the next step. The furthest she'd gone with him was kissing him with the lights off in the living room of her apartment and letting him explore up her shirt a little bit. He seemed to understand and let her take her time. She thought he was the most wonderful person in the world because he didn't try to force her into something she wasn't ready for, although sometimes she sensed he was frustrated with her lack of experience. She'd decided she wanted to take the next step with him after school was out for the summer, having decided to forgo the summer session that year to spend it with Greg.

One night, he was at her apartment for dinner as usual, reclining on her old green sofa, watching her television, and waiting for her to finish cooking dinner. "Greg, I need to ask you a favor," she said to him from the kitchen. He turned off the TV and looked at her.

"What is it, sweetheart?" he said in his buttery voice that made the hairs on the back of her neck rise in just the right way. She smiled as she looked at him. She hadn't told him she loved him yet, but she could feel they were close to the revelation. She just knew he loved her and they were perfect for each other.

She dropped the dried pasta into the boiling water and turned back to him to explain what she needed. Exams were coming and as much as she loved being with him, she really needed to study. Pleasant though he may be, he was a constant distraction. Her grades had slipped a little since she had started spending so much time with him and she wanted to ace the upcoming exams to get the top marks in her classes that she knew she was capable of attaining. "You know how much I love spending time with you and all, but I think I need a little time to myself for a few days. I need to…"

"What?" he stood up shouting at her, all traces of kindness gone from his voice. "You need some time to yourself, huh? Or is it time for someone else?" She shook her head back and forth frantically, not knowing how to respond verbally. He dropped the TV remote on the floor and continued yelling at her, "Cheating whore!" She was speechless at the unfounded accusation. "I knew it! You are cheating on me! You ugly, fat cow! I can't believe I wasted so much time with you and you didn't even put out. Of course you are sleeping with someone else! Worthless piece of trash!" He opened the door and then turned back to her, his eyes narrowed, "Bitch. Lose my number because we are done!" And with that, he stormed out the front door and slammed it behind him.

Roxanne was left devastated in the wake of his outburst. She sank to the floor in tears, ignoring the pot of pasta bubbling over on the stove. Curling in on herself, she cried for well over an hour before she finally pulled it together enough to get off the kitchen floor. The dinner she had cooked was ruined, pasta dried and burnt on the bottom of the pan, sauce overcooked, bread burnt in the oven, but she couldn't have eaten it at that point anyway. She numbly turned the burners and oven off and left the pots on the stove, deciding to clean them up in the morning since she had no energy left to do anything other than collapse into her bed. Turning off the light in her kitchen, she stumbled to her bedroom and fell into her bed fully clothed. She cried herself to sleep that night.

When she woke up the next morning, she felt better but only marginally. After showering and cleaning up her kitchen through a fresh round of tears, she gathered her school things and headed out to her first class, very glad that Greg wasn't in any of her classes. The day passed in a blur and she found herself back in her solitary apartment before she knew it. Several days passed in much the same way before her friends decided to put together an intervention. They all showed up with ice cream and pizza and had a good old fashioned sleep over to cheer her up. Something about that night and her friends' goofiness finally snapped her out of her trance. She found she could feel again and that her heart which she had previously thought demolished was really only bruised. At the last minute in the semester, she picked herself up and crammed in the studying she needed to get through the tests. In the end, she aced all of her finals, including business law.

Several months later, Roxanne was people watching as research for a paper she was writing in her creative writing elective course, and she saw Greg across the quad talking it up with another girl. Half of her wanted to storm up to him and give him a piece of her mind, but the half that was still a little damaged from the way he had ripped out her heart stopped her cold. She settled for watching them from afar, fuming over his sudden reappearance. Her friend, Josie Quinn, found her sitting in the courtyard after several minutes of self-reproaching examination.

"Hey Rox, whatcha doing?" the petite blonde haired girl asked with a playful punch to Roxanne's shoulder. Instead of responding, Roxanne inclined her head toward Greg and his new girl. Josie looked in the direction she had indicated. "Why are you staring at that asshole?"

The question took her off guard as Roxanne knew Josie had never met Greg, at least not while they were dating. "What do you mean, Jos?" she asked curiously.

She pointed at Greg, looking back at Roxanne with concern on her face. "I mean him. Jeremy Vasquez, Adam Peters, William Tate, or whatever name he is going by these days."

"What are you talking about?"

"He's a sick person, Rox. He preys on college women, letting them believe he's their prince charming, gets them to take care of him for a while and then dumps them. He doesn't even go here and he's a campus legend! Or rather, he's notorious on campus. He 'audits' classes to find his next victim."

"No. This can't be happening." Roxanne was in stunned disbelief. She had been taken in by a scam artist? What kind of investigative journalist would she be if she couldn't have even figured that out about the man she'd been with for months?

"What do you mean, Rox?" Josie looked at her friend with concern in her eyes, suspecting she knew exactly what that meant.

"That's Greg!" Roxanne exclaimed. Josie's mouth dropped open even though she knew what her friend was going to say. "Ugh! I can't believe this! I can't believe I fell for that asshole! No wonder he never wanted to meet my friends! I am so glad I didn't have sex with him!" She buried her face in her hands.

Josie rubbed Roxanne's back comfortingly. "Whoa! Rox, I am so, so sorry. If I had known it was him, I would have told you all about it a long time ago."

Roxanne sat up again and the look on her face was an angry one, but more so about the fact that, "I can't believe he lied to me about who he was! Who does that? And there I was, just like all the other saps, thinking he was some kind of prince charming. God, how stupid am I?"

"Don't beat yourself up, hon. He's had tons of victims. He never does anything illegal, just immoral, so there's nothing anyone can do about it. There will always be a gullible freshman he can con."

"Thanks, Jos. I was a junior when I was with him, so what does that say about me?!"

"That's not what I meant."

"Whatever," she snapped. "All I know is that I will never be lied to like that again. God help the man who dares lie to me in the future. It won't be pretty for him." And with that, she calmed herself down and put the episode with Greg behind her completely, taking comfort from the fact that she hadn't done anything really to push him away as she had previously thought. She focused all of her energy on school and graduated from college a few months later, with honors. Her job became the primary concern for her life and she never thought about Greg again until a certain large headed blue villain brought those painful memories to the surface once again.

Stumbling home down the streets in the torrential downpour, she felt as though her heart had been ripped out of her chest, leaving nothing but a gaping hole in its wake. She couldn't believe she had let herself be duped again! Not only had Megamind led her to believe he cared about her, he had lied about who he was! Yet again, the man she'd fallen for was just an act. Why did this keep happening to her? She was miserable about it, but she didn't let herself cry. She had promised herself she would never shed another tear over a man and she'd been successful at keeping that promise for all of her adult life. So, why did it feel different this time? Why did she feel like she'd left a piece of herself standing on that street corner?

She shook her head to banish that line of thinking. It didn't matter. He'd lied, end of story. She was not going to let the feelings her traitorous heart held have any affect over her. They'd already made her turn back around to see his dejected slumped form walking away from her. She felt betrayed and angry and she wanted to hit something. Her heart would just have to shut up because it was not going to get its way.

As she walked into her apartment building, Carlos tried to speak to her. She gave him a look that said shut up or you're going to get hurt. He slunk back from her ire and she stormed into the elevator. She immediately felt bad that she'd been mean to the friendly elderly doorman, but she couldn't help it. Her rage was in control just then and she needed to get home so she could vent it in a safe location. Damn Wayne for being dead. Damn Megamind for deceiving her and making her fall for him. Damn her stupid heart for letting the same thing happen to her again!

Once inside her apartment, she set the slide lock and deadbolt and then fell back against the door, sliding down until she hit the floor. She let her legs go out in front of her and rested her head against the solid wooden door. She wanted to scream, cry, be violent and curl up into a ball all at once. She needed someone to talk to and racked her brain to think of anyone who she could tell that wouldn't judge her. It didn't take long before she thought of Josie. The two of them had kept in contact, although sporadically, since graduating from college. Josie had moved out of state to pursue her chosen career in acting, but she never lost her level head. Roxanne pulled out her cell phone and dialed Josie's number.

After three rings, she heard a familiar voice answer sleepily, "Who is calling me at one in the morning?" It was one in the morning? Roxanne looked at the clock on the wall and grimaced to herself. Perhaps she should have looked at the clock before dialing her friend. "Roxanne? Are you ok?" Josie's voice came through, sounding more awake.

"Hey Josie. Yeah, I am fine. I just needed someone to talk to. I am sorry I didn't see what time it was before I called," she said with a shaky tone in her voice.

"It happened again, didn't it?"

Roxanne was speechless. How in the hell could she possibly know that? "Yes, but how did you know?"

"I remember the way you sounded the first time the man you cared about betrayed you. What happened?" her friend asked, no trace of sleepiness remaining in her voice.

Roxanne took a deep breath and then told her friend the entire sordid tale of the weeks she'd spent with Bernard and the date they'd had earlier. She didn't spare the details, knowing her friend thrived on the minutia of things like that. She fell silent for a moment but before Josie could say anything she added, "The only difference between Megamind and Greg is that Megamind had the decency to chase after me. And he didn't make me feel like I was the one deceiving him like Greg did."

"Wait. You sound like you are defending him."

"I am not, but it just about broke my heart for a completely different reason when he reacted to my lashing out at him. I asked if he really thought I would ever be with _him_. It was like he was accepting the inevitable, like he had already acknowledged that I would never want to be with him, an I had just confirmed it. I was so mean."

"You are defending him!"

"I am not, Jos!" Roxanne growled into the phone at her friend.

Josie didn't back down. "You are. You still care about him, even though he's not Bernard. Even though he's really the just guy who's been kidnapping you for years!" Roxanne was taken aback by her friend's accusation. Did she still care about him? Surely not. She didn't like the blue alien one bit, did she? "Rox, I know you have had a crush on that villain for years. Why else would you not have jumped at the chance to be with Wayne?"

"Wayne was not my type, and you know it! I prefer intelligent men and Wayne was only slightly smarter than a tree stump, God rest his soul. And I don't have a crush on Megamind, for the last time!"

"If you say so, Rox. I seem to remember a conversation we had about 'Sparking otherworldly green eyes' and a, what was it? Oh yes, a 'voice as smooth as satin and warm as velvet' that raised the hairs on the back of your neck. Or am I remembering wrong?"

A long silence fell over the two women as Roxanne remembered her own words spoken several years ago when she had only just met the two aliens. Everyone in the city had been struck with Wayne's brawn and rugged good looks, but she'd been captured literally and figuratively by the blue skinned self-proclaimed master of all villainy. His vivid eyes and manic smile, his silky voice and witty banter, his lithe body; she would be lying to herself if she completely denied that she had begun to feel something for him a lot sooner than a few weeks ago. She shook her head and furrowed her brow. She couldn't let herself think about him that way now, she was still mad at him.

"None of that matters now. He deceived me and betrayed my trust," but even as she said it, she wasn't sure of her own convictions. She just kept remembering the crushed look in his eyes as she sucker punched him in the heart before she left him standing in the street, alone, in the rain.

"Rox, look, why don't you get some sleep and we can have coffee together in the morning over Skype. You know, the later morning when decent people are awake. Call me at eight and we can continue this conversation, if you still need to talk."

Lost in her own thoughts, she said, "Okay Jos. Talk to you later. Bye." She barely heard her friend's responsive good-bye before snapping her phone shut. She stood up from her position on the floor in front of her door and put her phone down on the kitchen counter as she made her way to her bedroom, suddenly exhausted from her emotional evening.

Her dreams that night were plagued with green eyes and images from the time she'd spent together with Bernard. She woke up very late in the morning wondering why she hadn't put two and two together and figured him out long before his lie was revealed. Bernard had Megamind's unearthly glowing eyes and, come to think of it, the same velvety tone in his voice. So why did she never notice that or all of the other similarities between the two? The more she thought about it, the more she found she was irked with herself about the whole situation more than she was angry with him. Why was it that she let her heart blind her so much? It was then that she realized that she was still in love with him. But she had to find out why he had deceived her - although she already had a pretty good idea - because she didn't believe for a minute that it had been for a malicious reason. Her thoughts were interrupted by her doorbell ringing.

When she saw his eye through the peep hole, her heart skipped a beat. He was the last person she'd expected to see. After giving him a hard time, she did eventually let him in and the events that ensued over the next several hours drove the thoughts from the previous night entirely from her mind. Discovering Wayne still alive and in hiding had been a shock, as was the realization that the former hero had no intention of saving the day. But seeing that Megamind had clearly given up was what drove it home for her. She realized then that she had crushed him just as badly as he had crushed her; which meant he really did care about her. That was something she could not have said about Greg after he'd left. She watched the blue man walk away from her for a second time and felt like he was again taking a piece of her with him. He'd given up on everything, including her. Instead of feeling powerless, she decided she had to do something about it, so she set out to find Tighten herself. In retrospect, it was not the smartest thing she could have done, even if it did work out in the end.

When the entire debacle was said and done, she was simply grateful that Tighten had not killed Megamind before she had a chance to speak with him about everything. She could not be angry with him at all after he had risked his life to save hers from the super-powered moron. When she felt the overwhelming urge to throw her arms around him in a tight hug, she didn't resist. She knew after everything they'd been through that he really wasn't like Greg at all, using her for his own purposes until he decided to leave for greener pastures. Greg was evil; Megamind was not. Somehow she knew he would never mistreat her again.

Later that night after the din had died down and they were left sitting alone on the couch in her apartment, she asked him the question that had been burning in her mind for hours, "Why did you disguise yourself to be with me?"

For a moment, he looked stunned by the question, but then he recovered and answered, "I didn't really do it to be with you." She looked at him crossly, forbidding him to tell another lie lest he suffer her wrath. He continued quickly, "A-at first that was not the reason at all. It was simply a disguise of convenience, and a way to get you out of harm's way since I knew the bomb at the museum was about to go off. After that, you kept on asking to see me and spend time with me, even if it wasn't the real me that you wanted to see. But it was the real me, more so than I've ever been before," he rambled and then stopped himself. "I must admit that I was addicted to you and the way you looked at me; like I was normal." He was silent for a moment, staring at his fidgeting hands. Then he looked into her eyes, "I am sorry for deceiving you, Roxanne, but I knew you wouldn't want me if you knew who I really was. Once I realized I was falling in love with you, it was too late for me to let you go."

Her heart skipped a beat in her chest at his declaration of love and for a long moment she simply stared into his eyes, lost in the emerald pools that seemed to display his emotions as if they were written out on a page for anyone to see. She knew she felt for him the same as he had just said that he did for her and she knew she wanted to forgive him. All things considered, the simple fact that he was here spoke volumes to her about the fact that he was truly sorry for his deception. "I see," she finally said into the silence, not being able to think of anything else to say.

He continued his desperate plea, "I know I don't deserve a second chance, Roxanne, but I would be the happiest person on Earth if you let me prove to you that I had no intention of hurting you; that I only wanted to be with you because of how special you are to me." His eyes dropped from hers again, back to his own hands, his shoulders slumping in defeat. She let him stew for a few moments before she reached forward and took one of his slender blue hands into her chubbier peach one.

"Tell me one thing first."

He looked back into her eyes desperately. "Anything," he said quickly.

"How much of our time together was a lie?"

He took a deep breath before responding carefully, "Roxanne, I promise you that the only thing I lied about while we were together was my identity. Everything else was the complete truth." He fell silent again as he watched her reaction. Her brows knitted together and he panicked, feeling like he'd lost the battle already. His final plea came out in a tiny squeak, "Please believe me." His gaze sunk back to the carpet, unable to look at her any longer since he just knew she hated him.

Her heart was beating rapidly as she listened to his statement, nearly seizing in her chest as he uttered his heartfelt appeal for her acceptance. She decided she'd had enough of being mad at him and wanted nothing more than to regain the easy camaraderie they had shared during the weeks they'd dated. Even if Megamind had been wearing a mask to hide his identity, it was out of fear of rejection, not spite or malicious intent. It wasn't the same as the mask Greg had worn to hide his, strictly for his own amusement with the cruel intention of pulling the rug out from under her heart whenever he saw fit. Megamind really did care for her, and although she'd tried to deny it, she cared for him too, tremendously. Several moments of tense silence and introspection later, she finally replied to him, "I believe you, and I will let you have one second chance, but only if you agree to never lie to me ever again, deal?"

His eyes met hers again and the smile on his face was so large she thought it might just swallow his head whole, which was quite a feat in and of itself. "Deal," he said jubilantly. He couldn't help himself as he gathered her into his arms and crushed her against his chest in a tight hug. "I love you so much, Roxanne." Her arms naturally found their way around his shoulders and pulled him close to her, and everything felt right again in that moment.

She pulled away only slightly to look into his eyes as she said, "I love you, too, Megamind." She caressed his cheek with her hand and then leaned forward to capture his lips in a tender kiss. The hole in her chest disappeared and she felt as though nothing could pull her away from him. She hoped fervently that he would keep his promise.

As the days grew into weeks, weeks into months, months into years, Megamind did keep his promise and Roxanne was able to love him freely without fear that one day he would run away laughing at her. The wounds her heart had suffered in her youth were healed permanently by the steadfast love and affection she received from the last person she would have ever thought capable of such feelings. Megamind's complete devotion to and utter worship of her was overwhelming at times, but never unwelcome as she learned just what love could be with the right person. Ultimately, she was glad she'd given him a second chance instead of letting her past influence her decisions and ruin her chance for the best possible life she ever could have imagined.


End file.
